Anglo-Saxon Coins and Seals; the White Horse

Figures:

232.—Copper Syca.

The coins of a country are amongst the most valuable and interesting
of its material monuments. “The study of coins is not
to be considered as the province of the antiquary alone. Coins are
among the most certain evidences of history.” (‘Penny Cyclopædia.’)
In our engravings, we have presented a series of coins,
from the earliest Anglo-Saxon period to the time of Edward the
Confessor. They begin at page 60, Fig. 232; and continue in
every page to page 69, Fig. 282. To enter into a minute description
of these coins would be tedious to most readers, and not
satisfactory, with our limited space, to the numismatic student.
We shall therefore dismiss this branch of Old England’s antiquities
with a few passing remarks suggested by some of this series.

Figures:

233.—Silver Coin.

The little silver coin, Fig. 233, is called a sceatta. This is a
literal Anglo-Saxon word which means money; and when, in Anglo-Saxon
familiar speech, the entertainer at a tavern is called upon to
pay the shot,
the coin of Victoria does the same office as the sceat
of the early kings of Kent.

“As the fund of our pleasure, let each pay his shot,”

Figures:

234.—Silver Penny of Offa, King of Mercia.

says Ben Jonson. The penny is next in antiquity to the sceat.
The silver coins of the princes of the Heptarchy are for the most
part pennies. There is an extensive series of such coins of the
kings of Mercia. The halfpenny and the farthing are the ancient
names of the division of the penny; they are both mentioned in
the Saxon Gospels. The coins of Offa, king of Mercia (Fig. 234),
are remarkable for the beauty of their execution, far exceeding in
correctness of drawing and sharpness of impression those of his
predecessors or successors. “At the beginning of the ninth century
Ecgbeorht or Egbert ascended the throne of the West Saxon
kingdom; and in the course of his long reign, brought under his
dominion nearly the whole of the Heptarchic states; he is therefore
commonly considered as the first sole monarch of England,
notwithstanding those states were not completely united in one
sovereignty until the reign of Edgar. On his coins, he is usually
styled Ecgbeorht Rex, and sometimes the word Saxonum is added
in a monogram, within the inner circle of the obverse: some of his
coins have a rude representation of his head, and some are without
it. From Egbert’s time, with very few exceptions, the series of
English pennies is complete; indeed, for many hundred years, the
penny was the chief coin in circulation.” (‘Penny Cyclopædia.’)
The silver pennies of Alfred bear a considerable price; and this
circumstance may be attributed in some degree to the desire which
individuals in all subsequent ages would feel, to possess some memorial
of a man who, for four hundred years after his death, was
still cherished in the songs and stories of the Anglo-Saxon population,
mixed as they were with Norman blood, as the Shepherd of
the people, the Darling of England (Figs. 268, 272). A relic,
supposed more strictly to pertain to the memory of Alfred, is now
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It is an ornament of gold
which was found in the Isle of Athelney, the scene of Alfred’s
retreat during the days of his country’s oppression. The inscription
round the figure, holding flowers, means, “Alfred had me
wrought” (Fig. 309). The Saxon lantern, which Strutt has engraved
in his ‘Chronicle of England’ (Fig. 310), is also associated
with the memory of Alfred, in that story which Asser, his
biographer, tells of him, that he invented a case of horn and wood
for his wax candle, by the burning of which he marked the progress
of time. The genuineness of Asser’s Biography has been
recently questioned; but there is little doubt that its facts were
founded upon an older narrative. The portrait of Alfred (Fig. 308)
is copied from that in Spelman’s ‘Life;’ but the materials
out of which it is composed are probably not much to be relied
upon.

Figure spread at pages 80 and 81:

There is a very remarkable object in Berkshire, not a great distance
from Wantage, the birth-place of Alfred, which has been
considered a memorial of the bravery and patriotism which he displayed
even before he came to the throne. In the reign of Ethelred
the First, the brother of Alfred, the Danes, who had invaded Berkshire,
were routed with great slaughter in a battle known as that of
Æscesdun (Ash-tree Hill); and it was contended by Dr. Wise, a
learned antiquary of the last century, that the ridge of chalk hills
extending from Wantage into Wiltshire was the scene of this battle,
and that the White Horse which is cut out on the slope of the
chalk is a memorial of this great victory. The White Horse, which
gives its name to the hill, and to the fertile valley beneath, is a most
singular object. It is a rude figure, three hundred and seventy-four
feet in length, formed by removing the turf, and laying bare the
chalk, on the north-west face of this hill, just above a lofty and
steep declivity, which is visible from the surrounding country.
When the afternoon sun shines upon this side of the ridge, the
White Horse may be seen from a great distance—as far, it is said,
as fifteen miles. Lysons mentions that there was a tradition that
lands in the neighbourhood were formerly held by the tenure of
cleaning the White Horse, by cutting away the springing turf. An
annual festival was once held at this ancient ceremonial labour,
called by the people Scouring the Horse. But as the regard for
ancient memorials was dying out within the last century, and the
peasants of Berkshire were ground down to a worse than serf-like condition
of dependence on the poor-rates, the old festival was given
up, the White Horse was left to be overgrown and obliterated,
and even the memory of Alfred lived no longer amongst his Saxon
descendants in these lonely valleys, who had grown up in ignorance
and pauperism, because the humanities which had associated their
forefathers with their superiors in rank were unwisely severed.
The age of festivals, whether of religion or patriotism, is gone. We
ought to mention that some antiquaries differ from Dr. Wise, and
believe the White Horse to be of earlier origin than the age of
Alfred. There can be no question, however, that it is a work of
very high antiquity.

The civil government of the Anglo-Saxons, whether under the
Heptarchy, or after the kings of Wessex had obtained that ascendency
which constituted the united monarchy of all England, is
associated with very few existing monuments beyond those of its
medallic history. There was an ancient chapel at Kingston existing
about half a century ago, in which kings Edrid,
Edward the Martyr,
and Ethelred are stated to have been crowned. That chapel
is now destroyed (Fig. 305). An engraving was made of it whilst
the tradition was concurrent with the existence of the old building.
Kingston was unquestionably the crowning place of the Saxon
kings. There is a remarkable little church existing at Greensted, a
village about a mile from Ongar in Essex. It was described about
a century ago in the ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ of the Society of
Antiquaries; and attention has recently been called to it by a
correspondent of the ‘Penny Magazine.’ “In one of the early
incursions of the Danes into England (a. d. 870), Edmund, King
of East Anglia, was taken prisoner by them, and, refusing to
abjure the Christian religion, put to a cruel death. He was a
favourite of the people, but especially of the priests; and came
naturally, therefore, to be spoken of as a martyr, and his remains
to be held in estimation as those of a saint. In the reign of
Ethelred the Unready, the Danes,
emboldened by the cowardice or
feeble policy of the king, who only sought to buy them off from
day to day, and made tyrannous by the diminished opposition everywhere
offered to them, ravaged the country in all directions, until
at length, in the year 1010, ‘that dismal period,’ as Mr. Sharon
Turner calls it, ‘their triumph was completed in the surrender of
sixteen counties of England and the payment of forty-eight thousand
pounds.’ In this year the bones of St. Edmund were removed
from Ailwin to London, to prevent their falling into the hands of
the Danes. They appear to have remained in London about three
years, when they were carried back to Bedriceworth (Bury St. Edmund’s).
A MS. cited by Dugdale in the ‘Monasticon,’ and
entitled ‘Registrum Cœnobii S. Edmundi,’ informs us that on its
return to Bury, ‘his body was lodged (hospitabatur) at Aungre,
where a wooden chapel remains as a memorial to this day.’ It is
this same ‘wooden chapel’ which is supposed to form the nave of
Greensted Church. The inhabitants of the village have always had
a tradition that the corpse of a king rested in it, and the appearance
of the building vouches for its great antiquity.” (Fig. 306.)

The Witenagemot, or the great council of the nation,—prelates,
ealdormen, and thanes or governors of boroughs, with the crowned
king presiding, is represented in one of the Cotton manuscripts in
the British Museum (Fig. 307). We have an example of the
almost regal dignity of the greater noblemen, in the remarkable seal
of Alfric, Earl of Mercia, who lived towards the end of the tenth
century. The earl not only bears the sword of authority, but wears
a diadem (Fig. 313). There are representations of particular
monarchs in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which are perhaps more
valuable as examples of costume than as individual portraits.
Such is that of King Edgar (Fig. 311),
and of Canute and his queen (Fig. 312).

The seal which we have mentioned (or rather, the brass matrix of
the seal) of Alfric, Earl of Mercia, which was found by a labourer
in cutting away a bank near Winchester in 1832, is one of several
proofs which have set at rest a long disputed question as to the use
of seals among the Anglo-Saxons. The legal antiquaries of the
seventeenth century, such as Selden and Coke,
speak without any
hesitation of charters with seals granted by the Saxon kings.
Mr. Astle, a very competent authority, asserted, in 1791, that our Saxon
ancestors did not use seals of wax appended to their deeds (‘Archæologia,’
vol. x.). He acknowledged, however, that if such a seal
could be found of a date before the time of the Confessor, the
argument against their use, derived from the fact that the word
Sigillum did not always mean seal, would be set at rest. The
opinion of Astle was founded upon that of earlier antiquaries. The
late Mr. Douce, in some remarks upon two wax impressions of the
seal of the Abbey of Wilton, which he believes to be the original
Anglo-Saxon seal, notices these objections: “If Dr. Hickes and
the other objectors could have expected successfully to demonstrate
that the Saxons used no seals, it was necessary for them to annihilate
not only the numerous early seals of the German emperors and
French kings, but even the gems and other sigillatory implements
of the ancients. It would, indeed, have been a remarkable circumstance,
that during a period wherein many of the European
monarchs were continuing the immemorial practice of affixing seals to
public instruments, the Saxon sovereigns of England, who were not
inferior in knowledge and civilization to their contemporaries, and
who borrowed many of their customs from Italy and France, should
have entirely suspended a practice so well known and established.
It is much less extraordinary that a very small number of Saxon
seals should be remaining, than that, all circumstances considered,
they should not have been frequently used. All that the objectors
have been able to prove is, that a great many Saxon instruments
were destitute of seals; that some were forged with seals in Norman
times; and that the words ‘Signum’ and ‘Sigillum’ were often
used to express the mere signature of a cross, which nevertheless
was the representative of a seal.” In 1821, the seal of Ethelwald,
Bishop of Dunwich,
was found about a hundred yards from the site
of the Monastery of Eye. That remarkable seal is now in the
British Museum; and Mr. Hudson Gurney, who transmitted an
account of it to the Society of Antiquaries, says, “On the whole I
conceive there can remain no doubt but that this was the genuine
seal of Ethelwald, Bishop of Dunwich, about the middle of the
ninth century, and that it sets at rest the question hitherto in dispute
touching the use of seals among the Anglo-Saxons.”

These few remarks may not improperly introduce to our readers
the first of an uninterrupted series of monuments belonging to our
monarchical government—the great seals of England. The seal of
King Edward the Confessor is represented in Figs. 315 and 316.
On one side, according to the description of this seal by
Sir Henry Ellis, the king “is represented sitting on a throne bearing on his
head a sort of mitre, in his right hand he holds a sceptre finishing
in a cross, and in his left a globe. On the other side he is also
represented with the same sort of head-dress, sitting. In his right a
sceptre finishing with a dove. On his left a sword, the hilt pressed
toward his bosom. On each side is the same legend—Sigillum
Eadwardi Anglorum Basilei. This seal of King Edward
is mentioned several times in the ‘Domesday Survey.’ ”
(‘Archæologia,’ vol. xviii.) The seal of William the Conqueror,
which belongs to the next book, is little superior in workmanship to
that of the Confessor; and the sitting figures of each have considerable
resemblance (Fig. 342). The impression of the seal of the
Conqueror is preserved in the Hôtel Soubise at Paris, being
appended to a charter by which the king granted some land in
England to the abbey of St. Denis in France. This seal establishes
the fact that grants of lands immediately after the Conquest were
guaranteed by the affixing of a waxen seal; and although this
might not be invariably the case, it goes far to throw a doubt upon
the authenticity of the old rhyming grant said to be made by
William to the ancient family of the Hoptons, which Stow and
other early antiquaries have believed to be authentic. Stow gives
it in his ‘Annals,’ upon “the testimony of an old chronicle in the
library at Richmont,” omitting three introductory lines, upon the
authority of which in the sixteenth century a legal claim was
actually set up to the estate of the lords of Hopton:—

“To the heirs male of the Hopton lawfully begotten:—

From me and from mine, to thee and to thine,

While the water runs, and the sun doth shine;

For lack of heirs, to the king again.

I, William, king, the third year of my reign,

Give to thee, Norman Huntere,

To me that art both lefe and dear,

The Hop and Hoptown,

And all the bounds up and down,

Under the earth to hell,

Above the earth to heaven,

From me and from mine,

To thee and to thine,

As good and as fair

As ever they mine were.

To witness that this is sooth,

I bite the white wax with my tooth,

Before Jugg, Maud, and Margery,

And my third son Henry,

For one bow and one broad arrow,

When I come to hunt upon Yarrow.”

We give the above, with some slight corrections, from Blount’s
‘Ancient Tenures.’